Teachers picket MPP’s office

MASSIVE PICKET

Photo by Louis Tam

Teachers picket outside Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller's Bracebridge office on Wednesday, Dec. 5 against Bill 115. Many passing motorists honked their horns in a show of support for the teachers' cause.

MASSIVE PICKET

Photo by Louis Tam

Teachers picket outside Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller's Bracebridge office on Wednesday, Dec. 5 against Bill 115. Many passing motorists honked their horns in a show of support for the teachers' cause.

BRACEBRIDGE - There was barely enough sidewalk to contain the scores of protesters who picketed against Bill 115 in front of Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller’s Bracebridge office.
Well over 100 Muskoka teachers and supporters packed onto Manitoba Street on the afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 5 to voice their objections to the bill, which would allow the province to impose a two-year contract on teachers and takes away their right to collective bargaining.
Without any progress in labour negotiations, local teachers have dug in their heels by withholding voluntary extracurricular activities they run for students, among other administrative strike actions.
Elementary teachers have also said they will hold a one-day strike sometime before Christmas.
“We’re here to stick up against bullies, and the No. 1 thing we’re against is the fact that we’ve lost two rights that everybody else in Ontario has. They have the right to go to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and teachers do not. Teachers also do not have the right to appeal to the court system for a fair hearing against this draconian legislation that turns Ontario into a dictatorship,” said Monck Public School teacher Sandy Long. “Freeze my wages. I don’t care. You can take some money away from me. But I want these two rights back.”
Long said he’s found many of the Grade 7 and 8 students he teaches have been supportive of what teachers describe as a stand against bullying from the province.
“With this whole bullying thing, it really touches home to them as well, and we’ve had a lot of support from them,” he said. “I think Mr. McGuinty and the Liberal government, and even the Conservatives who supported them, have to realize that it takes a lot to tick off a kindergarten teacher or a Grade 1 teacher, and to get those very, very kind and patient people, to push them out onto the streets to protest.”
Miller himself was not in his office but in Toronto while the teachers protested. The rally started at around 4 p.m. with about a handful of picketers, but quickly grew to the point where teachers and their supporters spilled out onto Manitoba Street. Organized by the Trillium Lakelands Elementary Teachers Local, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation were also invited.
With the exception of one occupant of a passing vehicle who shouted at the teachers to “Go back to f---ing work,” large numbers of drivers honked their horns in a show of support.
Trillium Lakelands Elementary Teachers Local vice-president Karen Bratina condemned Bill 115 for putting the “government above the courts of Ontario” and “above the Labour Relations Act.”
“The message is we won’t stop until Bill 115 is repealed or gone completely, it needs to be repealed completely or severely modified,” she said. “We cannot as educators in Ontario accept a legislated bill that takes away our democratic and constitutional rights that we’ve worked so hard to earn.”
Trillium Lakelands Occasional Teachers local president Tracy Blodgett also took issue with one Ontario Regulation 274/12, which forces school boards to promote occasional teachers to full-time or long-term jobs based on seniority only. Currently, Trillium Lakelands principals are free to make their own decisions when hiring occasional teachers, with the only stipulation being that teachers within the board are considered first.
“Most of my members, their goal is to become permanent teachers. Whether (the bill) affects the occasional teachers in their day-to-day working jobs, it will affect them someday in the future,” she said.
Some local high school students plan to stage their own protest on Monday, Dec. 10 at 9:30 a.m. as they walk out of school in sympathy with teachers. This paper has heard from a representative of the Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School’s student parliament, Keana Barclay, that she expects around 200 to 400 people to participate in the grassroots sympathy strike.